Stay the Night (3 page)

Even then, he'd tried to do the right thing and talk to them. But banks didn't lend money to people who really needed it. No job, no income, no extensions, no refinancing.

DeLuca had always played by the rules, but they kept changing them to screw him. Then he'd met the Italian, who had listened to his troubles and given him the comfort and sympathy that he deserved. The Italian, who had been short-changed by life just as badly, didn't see him as a leper. Far from it. After one night with his new friend, DeLuca finally understood the truth: that it was his turn—no, his God-given
right
—to get some payback.

Now everything was going perfectly. By this time tomorrow night he'd meet the Italian, who had promised to take good care of him in exchange for this job. DeLuca would have enough money to retire permanently to Miami, where life for a man with serious cash was nonstop beaches, beer, and blondes.

It just didn't get any better than that.

The teller's top drawer, the safe money, held all the bills she'd started her shift with and another two thousand and change from the transactions she'd made that day. DeLuca focused only on her hands when she opened the reserve bottom drawer and began pulling out the neat, paper-banded bundles there.

He had no intention of stealing the teller's money. The real payout for this job made it look like chump change. But he needed the money as a smoke screen so he could get what he'd really come for: the small aluminum case a private government courier had just delivered to the vault manager's office.

The radio on his hip, tuned to scan the outgoing calls from the Atlanta Police Department, continued to put out a static buzz. During a bank heist the real threat was time, not the guards or the security system. DeLuca had worked in Atlanta; he knew the drill. Once the silent alarm tripped it would take two minutes for the monitoring company to notify Atlanta PD. In a big city like Atlanta, metro patrol units needed only two to four minutes at most to get to the branch. The alarm hadn't been tripped—yet—but that four- to six-minute escape window didn't apply to DeLuca.

He didn't have to run out of the bank. He'd arranged a little insurance, and when it was time he was going to walk out of here a free man. The uniforms would even hold the front door open for him.

“Wait.” He saw one packet that didn't bend as it should have when the teller tried to stuff it in the bag. As he caught her wrist and pulled it toward him, sweat from her skin slicked the black leather of his glove. “You trying to be cute?”

She looked at the pack she held, sucking in a breath as soon as she recognized the retired bills. “I'm sorry,” she told his ski mask. “I didn't know. They never tell us where they are. I swear.”

DeLuca turned and pointed his nine at the pale-faced security guard huddled on the floor with the loan officer, five tellers, and half a dozen customers who had still been inside when the manager had locked the front entrance doors. A palm-size flower of blood and tissue decorated the cap of the rent-a-cop's left uniform sleeve. More blood painted his arm and dripped into a pool of the same on the floor under his useless limb.

“You.” DeLuca beckoned with the gun. “Get over here.”

When the security guard had trouble standing, the thirty-something bank manager scuttled over and took his arm.

“Don't get up, Joe.” The sun from the atrium turned the manager's pretty blond wedge cut yellow-orange, and faded out the pink polka-dot jacket of her casual-Friday suit. “He's hurt too bad,” she said as she stood. “I'll do it.”

As DeLuca adjusted his aim, Joe's eyes widened.

“No, he'll shoot you.” The guard grabbed the manager's arm and yanked her down, a little too hard. One pink polka-dotted shoe banana-peeled out from under her and she fell sideways, tripping over some of the others. A sharp crack sounded as the manager's head hit the side of the lobby table. She landed on top of an old lady still clutching her endorsed social security check.

Joe's face turned gray as he clapped a hand over his own wound and crawled over to haul the limp blonde off the shrieking elderly woman. He checked the wide gash on the side of her head and the pulse in her neck before he gave DeLuca a filthy look. “You piece of shit.”

“You did that to her, not me.” DeLuca tossed the stiff pack of bills so that it landed in the guard's lap. “Pop it.” When Joe didn't pick up the pack, he targeted the horrified senior. “I can ruin her makeup, too, if you want.”

Joe took the pack and bent it in half. As DeLuca expected, the pressure triggered the tiny canister of CO
₂
hidden inside the pack, which exploded with a muffled bang. Purple dye powder showered the guard, the old lady, and three of the tellers clustered around their fallen manager.

As new screams erupted, DeLuca checked his watch. He still had a lot to do: grab the goods from the vault and make the switch. He'd need a few minutes to stow them in the manager's office and jam the door.

“Zip it closed,” he told the teller. She didn't move, even when he aimed for her dimple again. “Don't try me now, you stupid bitch.”

“I didn't know.” Shock had made her into a bug-eyed, lock-jointed robot. “It's not my fault. I didn't know.”

“Give me that.” DeLuca threaded his free hand through the handles of the gym bag and tried to haul it over the front of her station. The teller refused to let it go, clutching it as if it were her only lifeline. “Take your hands off or I'll shoot you in the face.”

“If you do, you'll get her blood all over the money,” a deep male voice with a distinct British accent said. “Damnably hard to launder out. Almost as much of a nuisance as that dye powder.”

DeLuca turned as something whizzed in front of him and slashed the back of his glove, knocking the gun out of his hand. Whatever it was kept going and buried itself in the wall on the other side of the lobby. The thin wooden shaft bobbed, wagging its brown-feathered end at DeLuca like a disapproving finger. Even with the flaring burn of pain from beneath the gashed leather over his hand, it took him a moment to register what it was and what had happened, and even then he didn't quite believe it.

DeLuca turned to see where it had come from, and saw that two strange men stood there. The shorter of the pair, a stocky bleached blond dressed in a red T-shirt and black cords, held two knives in his broad fists. The dark, polished blades glowed like gold. Beside him, a taller, rangy-looking man in an off-white fisherman's sweater and faded gray jeans drew another arrow from a quiver hanging from his hip. The powerful-looking longbow he held was as tall as he was, at least six feet long, and had strange markings carved into its sweeping wooden curves.

The short one sniffed the air like a curious bulldog. “Two wounded, Rob.” His accent sounded different, thicker and harder to understand. “One male, concealed.”

The one he called Rob fitted another arrow to his bow and pointed the sharp-looking copper head of it at DeLuca. “Find him, Will.”

DeLuca didn't know what to think. Neither one of these guys had been inside the bank when DeLuca had come out of the john; they'd just appeared out of thin air. But that couldn't have happened. As soon as DeLuca had walked in and taken over, he'd forced the manager to dead-bolt the doors and barricade them with the loan officer's massive desk. The doors were bolted, the barricade still in place.

Why the hell was the dark one using a
bow
?

He started to tell the one called Will not to move, and then caught his breath as a peculiar odor filtered through his mask. It warmed his lungs and smelled as if he had his face buried in a pricey gift basket of oranges and chocolate. Not perfume, but something just as powerful. The scents seemed to linger in his chest even after he exhaled, sweet and heavy.

“You,” the one called Rob said to him, “stay where you are and do nothing.” He lowered the bow, replacing the arrow in the quiver hanging from his hip and slinging the weapon over his shoulder and across his torso before he walked over to the cluster of hostages.

DeLuca would have gone after him right then, but for some reason his legs wouldn't move. Or didn't want to move. The longer he stood there, however, the more sense it made. Rob, whoever he was, had it right: He needed to stay where he was and do nothing.

“Is she unconscious?” Rob asked Joe, who nodded. He checked the guard's shoulder, and then gently removed the scarf from the manager's throat and wrapped it like a bandage around her head. “If she rouses, my friend, keep her still and quiet. Help should arrive momentarily.”

DeLuca barely heard him. He remained in place and studied the bank's entrance doors. They were still locked, and the heavy oak desk remained in place. How had they gotten inside? Had they been hiding in the back? Then he saw the vault door standing open, and through it could see that some of the safety-deposit boxes had been pulled out. They'd been in the vault, robbing it—that's why he hadn't seen them.

They couldn't be here for the same thing. He'd assured the Italian: No one else but the feds in Chicago knew about moving the goods to Atlanta for the sting operation.

“Hey, you. Rob.” DeLuca waited until the pretty purple eyes focused on his face. “You guys looking to score?”

Rob said nothing, but wrapped his hand around one curved end of the wooden bow as if to pull it from his shoulder.

Sweat made the inside of the ski mask cling to DeLuca's face. The last thing he wanted to do was to make Rob angry or upset. “If you are, maybe we could join forces. Split the take three ways.”

“Very generous,” Rob said at last, “but I think not. The authorities have this building surrounded.”

“Not yet.” DeLuca heard a rusty sound come from his own throat, and felt the corners of his mouth stretch around the chuckle. “No one tripped the alarm.”

“No one had to.” Rob turned his attention to the teller still clutching the gym bag. “Come away from there now, dear girl.”

“Sure.” The brunette's expression relaxed as she released her grip on the gym bag, smiled, and walked around the corner toward Rob as if greeting a favorite customer. “You know, you have the most beautiful eyes I've ever seen.”

“Like amethysts,” the old woman on the floor said, and sighed with pleasure as she sat up. Dye transferred from her gnarled hand to her cheek as she pressed it there in the old-fashioned gesture of a dazzled girl. “Paul Newman had eyes like that.”

“Nah, Newman's were washed-out blue,” Joe said as he propped the unconscious manager on his lap and cradled her bandaged head with his good arm. “His are more like Liz Taylor's.” Embarrassment turned the guard's cheeks dark red and his voice gruff. “Ya know. If Liz were a guy.”

Rob went over to the front entrance doors and pushed aside the heavy desk as if it were made of cardboard.

“Please don't do that,” DeLuca called out, afraid now. “You don't want to let the cops in.”

“On the contrary.” Rob released the dead bolt. “I phoned them from the vault.”

He'd called the cops on him? DeLuca couldn't believe it. “Why would you do that?”

Rob didn't look at him as he studied the parking lot. “Because you've injured the innocent, you fool.”

The insult made DeLuca's chest tighten, and tears of self-pity burned his eyes and clogged his nose. Rob didn't like him. Rob, who had risked his life to save all these poor people, thought he was foolish. And he
was
. He'd let Rob stop him, hadn't he? With nothing more than a bow and arrow.

DeLuca wasn't walking out of here with anything. The Italian would never pay him for showing up empty-handed at the rendezvous. No three million dollars. No easy life in Miami. No revenge.

Tears soaked the wool covering DeLuca's nose and mouth, making it harder to breathe but a little easier to think. He'd screwed up, but he could turn things around. He just had to get his head straight, figure out what went wrong. He didn't have to stand here and wait to be arrested . . . so why was he doing that?

What had this snotty English asshole done to him?

DeLuca scanned the faces of the hostages. Two minutes ago he'd put the fear of God into these people; they'd been under his complete control. He'd terrified them into submission. Now they were happy and grinning and chatting as if nothing had happened.

As if DeLuca weren't even there.

The sweet, smothering smell of orange and chocolate had been thinning along with the haze of confusion clouding DeLuca's mind, and he looked down at the floor. The gun the arrow had knocked out of his hand lay only four feet away.

Jesus, he'd forgotten about dropping the gun.

White lights flashing outside the window illuminated the handsome symmetry of Rob's face. “The medics are here now.” He went over to help the old lady up.

With some effort, DeLuca shuffled over and picked up his weapon. “Look over here, you rat bastard.” When Rob turned toward him, he fired three rounds into the center of the ivory sweater. The silencer muffled the shots, the impact of which knocked Rob flat on his back.

“Now who's the fool?” DeLuca turned and sneered at the brunette teller. “Not so pretty anymore, is he?” She didn't answer. “You deaf?”

“No, I heard you.” Her sleepy gaze shifted past his face. “Sir, are you all right?”

“My sweater wants mending.” Rob stood there, his head bent. Long, pale fingers, crosshatched with innumerable thin white scars, plucked a distorted slug from the torn wool of his sweater and tossed it away.

DeLuca looked at the man he'd just killed and mechanically raised the nine to fire again, but chocolate wafted in his face, and a broad, muscular hand snatched it away and tossed it to Rob.